I’d like to propose an amendment to the list of basic human rights. I think we need to add internet access. Everyone on earth, every person, deserves to be able to get on the internet and talk to whomever they wish. Every person deserves access to the internet’s public repositories of information. If someone chooses not to use the internet that’s fine, but anyone who wants to talk, or listen, or argue, or make weird art, or ask for help, or offer help, deserves to.
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Oh cool, I did not know that was already a thing. Well, I’m glad I made it to the party anyway.
Yeah, I’m glad there are those who see the importance.
Starting in 2011, Telefónica, the former state monopoly that holds the country’s “universal service” contract, has to guarantee to offer “reasonably” priced broadband of at least one megabit per second throughout Spain
Man, I wish the monopoly in Canada would do something like that . . . Stuck paying stupid amount of money for not even gigabit speeds . . .
Free, uncensored and unrestricted internet access.
Could definitely use some better wording, especially this part:
Everyone on earth, every person, deserves to be able to get on the internet and talk to whomever they wish
This could easily be interpreted as it being illegal to ban someone from any online community or website, or even to block them at a user level. If you block a user’s posts, then they can no longer talk to you, which would violate their right to talk to whomever they wish.
So… Scammers, trolls, spammers, AI slop bots, corporate accounts, etc. could all claim they have a right to talk to you over the internet, and any attempt to stop them from doing so is a violation of their rights.
Yeah, there are going to have to be policies that protect against harassment, including spam. I’m not technical enough to know how to draft those policies, but I think the gist would be that even if you have the right to send messages, no one has any obligation to listen, or continue to listen, or host them on their servers. Malicious activity that disrupts common spaces or others’ servers (like DOS attacks) will need some kind of protection. I imagine it would work a lot like federated servers do now: anyone can host a server and say what they want, but other users (and servers) have no obligation to listen to them, rehost their content, or interact with them in any way.
Does free speech not include technologies to access said freedom of speech? Anyways, here for an open and free web
I think there have been attempts to include them in the past, like libraries or public access television, but rule has generally been that access to media, especially the ability to create and distribute media, has not been guaranteed and is usually controlled by cartels. See print media, telecom companies.
